You're doing it wrong.

I was part of this CD club at some point in the 90's BEFORE there were DVD's...

Posted via email from consult coniferous

I just want to get off the !@**$ bus! #usability

Here's one for Don Norman.

I ride the bus a fair bit and I've had a chance (since I'm just sitting there) to do some User & Task analysis.

User Goal: Get off the bus.

Task: Open the door.

Task Completeness: I'd say 3 out of 10 users are able to accomplish the task without 'incident'.

User scenarios: Touch the door, bang on the door, wave their hands furiously at the door, yell at the bus driver, run to the front of the bus, kick the door, swear.

Calgary Transit bought some new buses awhile ago that have this engineering miracle. It uses motion sensors above the door frame to activate the hydralics to open the doors. Only it doesn't work very well for a couple of reasons:

1. Riders are 'used' to the old doors. The old doors have a crash bar on them that is a well-known affordance - push on the bar with some force and the door opens. The new doors are asking the user to abandon an established mental-model in favour of something else and it doesn't work very well.

2. The new doors aren't 'engineered' to be usable. Oh, they've been engineered alright - to work the way the engineers intended, but without thought of how a user will interact with them. Rather than push on the door (which seems to lock up the process), the user has to lightly touch or wave their hands (like an automatic hand dryer). Then, they have to WAIT for the door mechanism to cycle and open the door automatically. If the user pushes on the door prematurely, again it freezes up.

Even when familiar with the doors workings (as an experienced user), I still encounter difficulties with the mechanism. The engineering is not user-centric and I would daresay, faulty.

Jacob Nielsen use to say that any user testing is better than no user testing. I wonder if the folks that built these doors even bothered, or didn't like what they saw...

Posted via email from John Hutchings

Get your chicken (sh*t) together

Co-teaching a course with Jeff Nelson and the topic discussed was User Experience and Form design. Used a personal example about how not to do forms.
++++
Flashback to after Christmas. I was still craving some bird and stuffing. Swiss Chalet, I thought. Online ordering? Cool. And then it went downhill in a hurry.

User goal = me, chicken. When ordering by phone, expect to give up the following:

1. (First) name
2. Order
3. Address
4. Phone # (for follow up)
5. Payment information
   

Here's what went down...

Step 1: Phone number. Seems reasonable, but two things: 1). There is no 'status and visibility'. In other words, how many hoops do I have to jump through to get my dinner; 2). Why just phone number on this page? Are you geo-locating me?








Step 2: Personal Information. Why do I need to create a profile? Why do you need to know if I'm a Mr. or Ms. and what my last name is (obviously for marketing purposes)? Which fields are mandatory vs. optional? Love this line: "Please note: The address field is optional. If you leave it blank, Delivery will not be available unless you compete your profile". Understand the over 18 legal requirement (PIPEDA compliance), but you're still adding to the user experience burden.








Step 3: Error handling. So, I screwed up. Quelle surprise. It's not apparent how I messed until after submit. Inline contextual help and visual indicators might have assisted. Oh, and they reset the Password settings.








Step 4: I've told you all about myself in good faith and I'm still nowhere near accomplishing my goal. When do I get to select my meal? What's next? Postal code. Hmmm. Could they not have asked this a little bit earlier for localization (and, as you'll see availability)?








Step 5: What the heck does this error message mean? No context, nothing. After all that, you want me to call?








So, I called them, thus breaking the online customer experience to move to another channel. After another 10 minutes, we discover that I can't have their chicken - outside delivery area. Wow.

Lessons learned:

1. Obviously, don't buy their chicken online
2. Before you design a form, think about user goals and paths
3. To paraphrase Luke Wroblewski: "A raindrop never thinks that it's responsible for the flood". Don't let other departments from within dictate the customer's experience. By asking marketing and sales questions, as well legal stuff, you incrementally degrade user delight

All I wanted was chicken and stuffing...